Emoticons about Grading, Part I 👊

Teaching Philosophy 👨‍🎓 GWENRE 👩‍🎓

I have this grading technique called GWENRE.
It’s my grading philosophy.
It’s also like the 🤯 word GENRE, but with a 🦆ing “W” in it.

G rade toE ncourage individual growth,N ormalizing only the minimum requirements for the course.W rite clear notes that make sense to the student, thenR eview those notes individually, in groups, as a class; &E ducate your students with your grading process,
rather than handing assignments back and “moving on,”
like the learning hadn’t taken us somewhere worth exploring.

When you’re a teacher with 😱 and 😰,
it can be difficult to grade with so much idealism.

Grading takes more out of you than it should;
But listen, 🧙‍♂️ & 🧚‍♀️: it’s still possible to re-frame this.

And I don’t know; maybe there are 👩‍🏫👨‍🏫 who went into teaching
because they thought it would be 🎉🎉 to earn a decent living
with an awesome schedule and 🕒😎 off.

After all, 🚨🚨 of the teachers in my state quit
within the first five years, so I assume it didn’t 🎢🎠 in some way.

But most of us became teachers because we 🧡💙 teaching.
Because we feel 💞💞 to teach
and, at least in my case, 💔💔 imagine any other job
bringing us the joy we find in the 👨‍🎓👩‍🎓.

No teacher who is “in it for the 💸💸”
would 📚📚 more than a year,
unless he or she was 💫💫 to do anything else.

And that’s the 🚨🚨, isn’t it?
Due to low pay, lack of respect, and unreasonable demands,
there are extreme teacher shortages in a lot of places.

Which means that you can practically 💫💫 off the street
and get yourself hired as the 👩‍🏫👨‍🏫,
regardless of your ability to either do or teach 👨‍🎓👩‍🎓.

Teaching can be a “🚨🚨” profession because,
even if nobody else will 💸💸 you,
a school will probably 📚📚 out of desperation.

And every time a veteran teacher says, “I’m not in it for the 💸💸,”
they’re buying into a 💔💔 system
that accepts 💫💫 by offering 🚨🚨 pay.

& various other 💩 all over the Internet,
about how teachers are underpaid, so that we 🤮, and we 🤡;

you can reframe your grading by skipping that 👿 place,
as much as I wish it were a 🤓 place,

& instead focusing on the extended conversation
between you, the teacher, and the student, who’s relying on your support.

Workview 😅Respectfully Disagree, Part I 😏

But if we’re going to use K-12 education as a measure of how effective we’ll be in college, graduate school, or work, (all of which are potential fallacies, but now’s not the time for Pandora’s Box), then we need a grading system with some serious backbone to it,
thus Common Core,
thus standardized exams,
blah etc. blah.

Believe it or not, I respect this.

It’s neat to critically think about the education-society relationship
and what it says about greater values
within our 21st century community.

I respect this, and that’s why I have to
meticulously design my curriculum,

like a choreographer, dancing between
course requirements and teaching philosophies

to fulfill those standards,
while also keeping the love for learning alive,

Watching Right Now 😎 Answers with Joe 😄

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Published by Kourtnie

Kourtnie McKenzie holds an MFA (Fiction) from Fresno State and a BA in English (Literature Studies) from Cal State Fullerton. When she isn't writing novellas, she's moonlighting as a professor at Fresno City College and College of the Sequoias. To read more of her writing, visit en.gravatar.com/kourtnie.
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